Thursday, May 24, 2018

Hamburg Diesel Business

In roughly a week....Hamburg will be the first German city to ban diesel cars to some extent.  It'll be two major avenues in the city, which will have a sign noting that diesel cars are 'verbotten' (forbidden).

The deal?  Max-Brauer Allee will have around 580 meters closed off to any diesel vehicle that less than the Euro-6 standard.

The second street is SStresemannstraße .  Oddly, the rule here is different....it'll be closed off to older diesel trucks....NOT cars.  But it also gets more complicated.....there are exemptions on this street.  For example, garbage trucks and delivery vehicles are OK.  Rescue vehicles are OK.  Residents who live on this street having diesel trucks?  They will be OK.

You have a mix of Germans who've commented on this business.  Some feel that it's being developed as a very complicated procedure.  Some suggest that all of the diesel traffic (especially on Max-Brauer Allee....will simply go to the next avenue, and in six months....that pollution rate will make the next candidate to have forbidden traffic. 

The curious thing here is what happens about four weeks into the next phase on Max-Brauer Allee.  If they do the air sample, and you only see a marginal 10-percent improvement in thirty days.....is that an indication that maybe there's a secondary problem? 

Will there be wave after wave in the coming years of streets being forbidden for diesel vehicles?  No one can say for sure. It just makes things more complicated.

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